Search results for: Knowledge management.

Authors: Muhammad Marsudi, Hani Shafeek

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The purpose of this paper is to simulate the production process of a metal stamping industry and to evaluate the utilization of the production line by using ARENA simulation software. The process time and the standard time for each process of the production line is obtained from data given by the company management. Other data are collected through direct observation of the line. There are three work stations performing ten different types of processes in order to produce a single product type. Arena simulation model is then developed based on the collected data. Verification and validation are done to the Arena model, and finally the result of Arena simulation can be analyzed. It is found that utilization at each workstation will increase if batch size is increased although throughput rate remains/is kept constant. This study is very useful for the company because the company needs to improve the efficiency and utilization of its production lines.

Keywords: Arena software, case study, production line, utilization.

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Authors: Ayse Gecer, Nihal Erginel

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Quality control is the crucial step for ISO 9001 Quality System Management Standard for companies. While measuring the quality level of both raw material and semi product/product, the calibration of the measuring device is an essential requirement. Calibration suppliers are in the service sector and therefore the calibration supplier selection is becoming a worthy topic for improving service quality. This study presents the results of a questionnaire about the selection criteria of a calibration supplier. The questionnaire was applied to 103 companies and the results are discussed in this paper. The analysis was made with MINITAB 14.0 statistical programs. “Competence of documentations" and “technical capability" are defined as the prerequisites because of the ISO/IEC17025:2005 standard. Also “warranties and complaint policy", “communication", “service features", “quality" and “performance history" are defined as very important criteria for calibration supplier selection.

Keywords: Calibration, criteria of calibration supplier selection, calibration supplier selection, questionnaire

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Authors: A. Taqaddas

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Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are one of the major treatment modalities that play important role in the management of a number of different cancers. This study for the first time evaluates the toxicity of these treatment modalities and its impact on quality of life of cancer patients in Pakistan. The study also for the first time determines what cancer patients of different ages and cancer stages believe would be an effective intervention to manage their psychosocial needs and treatment induced toxicity. The article also provides evidence based approach for the use of variety of interventions to mange cancer treatment induced morbidity and toxicity. In light of the present study and reviewed research data, evidence based recommendations are also made for selection of appropriate interventions to manage Pain, Nausea and Vomiting, Anxiety and Depression, Fatigue and Overall QOL of cancer survivors.

Keywords: Chemotherapy Toxicity, Psycho-Social Interventions, Quality of Life, Radiotherapy Toxicity.

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Authors: Giorgi Bregadze

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Tourism is the most viable and sustainable economic development option for Georgia and one of the main sources of foreign exchange earnings. Events are considered as one of the most effective ways to attract foreign visitors to the country, and, recently, the government of Georgia has begun investing in this sector very actively. This article stresses the necessity of research based economic policy in the tourism sector. In this regard, it is of paramount importance to measure the economic effects of the events which are subsidized by taxpayers’ money. The economic effect of events can be analyzed from two perspectives; financial perspective of the government and perspective of economic effects of the tourism administration. The article emphasizes more realistic and all-inclusive focus of the economic effect analysis of the tourism administration as it concentrates on the income of residents and local businesses, part of which generate tax revenues for the government. The public would like to know what the economic returns to investment are. In this article, the methodology used to describe the economic effects of UEFA Super Cup held in Tbilisi, will help to answer this question. Methodology is based on three main principles and covers three stages. Using the suggested methodology article estimates the direct economic effect of UEFA Super cup on Georgian economy. Although the attempt to make an economic effect analysis of the event was successful in Georgia, some obstacles and insufficiencies were identified during the survey. The article offers several recommendations that will help to refine methodology and improve the accuracy of the data. Furthermore, it is very important to receive the correct standard of measurement of events in Georgia. In this caseü non-ethical acts of measurement which are widely utilized by different research companies will not trigger others to show overestimated effects. It is worth mentioning that to author’s best knowledge, this is the first attempt to measure the economic effect of an event held in Georgia.

Keywords: Biased economic effect analysis, expenditure of local citizens, time switchers and casuals, UEFA super cup.

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Authors: M. N. Norshita, B. Z. Halimah, T. S. Tengku Mohammad

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The implementation of electronic government started since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by the Malaysia government. The introduction of ICT in the public sector especially e-Government initiatives opens up a new book in the government administration throughout the world. The aim or this paper is to discuss the implementation of e-government in Malaysia, covering the result of public user self assessment on Malaysia's electronic government applications. E-services, e-procurement, Generic Office Environment (GOE), Human Resources Management Information System (HRMIS), Project Monitoring System (PMS), Electronic Labor Exchange (ELX) and e-syariah(religion) were the seven flagship application assessed. The study adopted a crosssectional survey research approach and information system literature were used. The analysis was done for 35 responden in pilot test and there was evidence from public user's perspective to suggest that the e-government applications were generally successful.

Keywords: Electronic government, flagship, multimedia super corridor, public user.

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Authors: M. Dinakaran, P. Balasubramanie

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With the demand of mobility by users, wireless technologies have become the hotspot developing arena. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group has developed Mobile IP to support node mobility. The concept of node mobility indicates that in spite of the movement of the node, it is still connected to the internet and all the data transactions are preserved. It provides location-independent access to Internet. After the incorporation of host mobility, network mobility has undergone intense research. There are several intricacies faced in the real world implementation of network mobility significantly the problem of nested networks and their consequences. This article is concerned regarding a problem of nested network called pinball route problem and proposes a solution to eliminate the above problem. The proposed mechanism is implemented using NS2 simulation tool and it is found that the proposed mechanism efficiently reduces the overload caused by the pinball route problem.

Keywords: Mobile IP, Pinball routing problem, NEMO

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Authors: Khalil Shihab, Nida Al-Chalabi

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This article describes Uruk, the virtual museum of Iraq that we developed for visual exploration and retrieval of image collections. The system largely exploits the loosely-structured hierarchy of XML documents that provides a useful representation method to store semi-structured or unstructured data, which does not easily fit into existing database. The system offers users the capability to mine and manage the XML-based image collections through a web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI). Typically, at an interactive session with the system, the user can browse a visual structural summary of the XML database in order to select interesting elements. Using this intermediate result, queries combining structure and textual references can be composed and presented to the system. After query evaluation, the full set of answers is presented in a visual and structured way.

Keywords: Data-centric XML, graphical user interfaces, information retrieval, case-based reasoning, fuzzy sets

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Authors: Abdulaziz Alsadhan, Naveed Khan

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In recent years intrusions on computer network are the major security threat. Hence, it is important to impede such intrusions. The hindrance of such intrusions entirely relies on its detection, which is primary concern of any security tool like Intrusion detection system (IDS). Therefore, it is imperative to accurately detect network attack. Numerous intrusion detection techniques are available but the main issue is their performance. The performance of IDS can be improved by increasing the accurate detection rate and reducing false positive. The existing intrusion detection techniques have the limitation of usage of raw dataset for classification. The classifier may get jumble due to redundancy, which results incorrect classification. To minimize this problem, Principle component analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) can be applied to transform raw features into principle features space and select the features based on their sensitivity. Eigen values can be used to determine the sensitivity. To further classify, the selected features greedy search, back elimination, and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) can be used to obtain a subset of features with optimal sensitivity and highest discriminatory power. This optimal feature subset is used to perform classification. For classification purpose, Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) are used due to its proven ability in classification. The Knowledge Discovery and Data mining (KDD’99) cup dataset was considered as a benchmark for evaluating security detection mechanisms. The proposed approach can provide an optimal intrusion detection mechanism that outperforms the existing approaches and has the capability to minimize the number of features and maximize the detection rates.

Keywords: Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Principle component analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Local Binary Pattern (LBP), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP).

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Authors: Gregor Radonjič, Aleksandra P. Korda, Damijan Krajnc

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The aim of the study was to investigate whether there is the promotion of product ecodesign measures as a result of adopting ISO 14001 certification in manufacturing companies in the Republic of Slovenia. Companies gave the most of their product development attention to waste and energy reduction during manufacturing process and reduction of material consumption per unit of product. Regarding the importance of different ecodesign criteria reduction of material consumption per unit of product was reported as the most important criterion. Less attention is paid to endof- life issues considering recycling or packaging. Most manufacturing enterprises considered ISO 14001 standard as a very useful tool or at least a useful tool helping them to accelerate and establish product ecodesign activities. Two most frequently considered ecodesign drivers are increased competitive advantage and legal requirements and two most important barriers are high development costs and insufficient market demand.

Keywords: ecodesign, environmental management system, ISO 14001, products

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Authors: Bertalan Forstner, Dr. Hassan Charaf

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In the world of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking different protocols have been developed to make the resource sharing or information retrieval more efficient. The SemPeer protocol is a new layer on Gnutella that transforms the connections of the nodes based on semantic information to make information retrieval more efficient. However, this transformation causes high clustering in the network that decreases the number of nodes reached, therefore the probability of finding a document is also decreased. In this paper we describe a mathematical model for the Gnutella and SemPeer protocols that captures clustering-related issues, followed by a proposition to modify the SemPeer protocol to achieve moderate clustering. This modification is a sort of link management for the individual nodes that allows the SemPeer protocol to be more efficient, because the probability of a successful query in the P2P network is reasonably increased. For the validation of the models, we evaluated a series of simulations that supported our results.

Keywords: Peer-to-Peer, model, performance, networkmanagement.

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Authors: J. Areerut, F. Samuel

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The purpose of this research is to analyze the pattern of television commercials and how they encourage non-governmental organizations to build their image in Thailand. It realizes how public relations can impact an organization's image. It is a truth that bad public relations management can cause hurt a reputation. On the other hand, a very small amount of work in public relations helps your organization to be recognized broadly and eventually accepted even wider. The main idea in this paper is to study and analyze patterns of television commercials that could impact non-governmental organization's images in a greater way. This research uses questionnaires and content analysis to summarize results. The findings show the aspects of how patterns of television commercials that are suited to non-governmental organization work in Thailand. It will be useful for any non-governmental organization that wishes to build their image through television commercials and also for further work based on this research.

Keywords: Television Commercial (TVC), Organization Image, Non-Governmental Organization: NGO, Public Relation.

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Authors: Karrar Raoof Kareem Kamoona, Enas Fathi Taher AlHares, Zeynep Isik

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The various disciplines in the construction industry and the co-existence of the people in the various disciplines are what builds well-developed, closely-knit interpersonal skills at various hierarchical levels thus leading to a varied way of leadership. The varied decision making aspects during the lifecycle of a project include: autocratic, participatory and last but not least, free-rein. We can classify some of the decision makers in the construction industry in a hierarchical manner as follows: project executive, project manager, superintendent, office engineer and finally the field engineer. This survey looked at how decisions are made during the construction period by the key stakeholders in the project. From the paper it is evident that the three decision making aspects can be used at different times or at times together in order to bring out the best leadership decision. A blend of different leadership styles should be used to enhance the success rate during the project lifecycle.

Keywords: Leadership style, construction, decision-making, built environment.

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Authors: P. M. Natarajan, Shambhu Kallolikar, S. Ganesh

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By size and volume of water, Ganges River basin is the biggest among the fourteen major river basins in India. By Hindu’s faith, it is the main ‘holy river’ in this nation. But, of late, the pollution load, both domestic and industrial sources are deteriorating the surface and groundwater as well as land resources and hence the environment of the Ganges River basin is under threat. Seeing this scenario, the Indian government began to reclaim this river by two Ganges Action Plans I and II since 1986 by spending Rs. 2,747.52 crores ($457.92 million). But the result was no improvement in the water quality of the river and groundwater and environment even after almost three decades of reclamation, and hence now the New Indian Government is taking extra care to rejuvenate this river and allotted Rs. 2,037 cores ($339.50 million) in 2014 and Rs. 20,000 crores ($3,333.33 million) in 2015. The reasons for the poor water quality and stinking environment even after three decades of reclamation of the river are either no treatment/partial treatment of the sewage. Hence, now the authors are suggesting a tertiary level treatment standard of sewages of all sources and origins of the Ganges River basin and recycling the entire treated water for nondomestic uses. At 20million litres per day (MLD) capacity of each sewage treatment plant (STP), this basin needs about 2020 plants to treat the entire sewage load. Cost of the STPs is Rs. 3,43,400 million ($5,723.33 million) and the annual maintenance cost is Rs. 15,352 million ($255.87 million). The advantages of the proposed exercise are: we can produce a volume of 1,769.52 million m³ of biogas. Since biogas is energy, can be used as a fuel, for any heating purpose, such as cooking. It can also be used in a gas engine to convert the energy in the gas into electricity and heat. It is possible to generate about 3,539.04 million kilowatt electricity per annum from the biogas generated in the process of wastewater treatment in Ganges basin. The income generation from electricity works out to Rs 10,617.12million ($176.95million). This power can be used to bridge the supply and demand gap of energy in the power hungry villages where 300million people are without electricity in India even today, and to run these STPs as well. The 664.18 million tonnes of sludge generated by the treatment plants per annum can be used in agriculture as manure with suitable amendments. By arresting the pollution load the 187.42 cubic kilometer (km³) of groundwater potential of the Ganges River basin could be protected from deterioration. Since we can recycle the sewage for non-domestic purposes, about 14.75km³ of fresh water per annum can be conserved for future use. The total value of the water saving per annum is Rs.22,11,916million ($36,865.27million) and each citizen of Ganges River basin can save Rs. 4,423.83/ ($73.73) per annum and Rs. 12.12 ($0.202) per day by recycling the treated water for nondomestic uses. Further the environment of this basin could be kept clean by arresting the foul smell as well as the 3% of greenhouse gages emission from the stinking waterways and land. These are the ways to reclaim the waterways of Ganges River basin from deterioration.

Keywords: Holy Ganges River, lifeline of India, wastewater treatment and management, making Ganges permanently holy.

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Authors: Faisal Ali, Mansoor Shuakat, Lirong Cui, Helena Uhde, Rabia Riasat, Janeth J. Marwa

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HR is a department that enhances the power of employee performance in regard with their services, and to make the organization strategic objectives. The main concern of HR department is to organize people, focus on policies and their system. The empirical study shows the relationship between HRM (Human Resource Management practices) and their Job Satisfaction. The Hypothesis is testing on a sample of overall 320 employees of 5 different Pharmaceutical departments of different organizations in Pakistan. The important thing as Relationship of Job satisfaction with HR Practices, Impact on Job Satisfaction with HR Practices, Participation of Staff of Different Departments, HR Practices effects the Job satisfaction, Recruitment or Hiring and Selection effects the Job satisfaction, Training and Development, Performance and Appraisals, Compensation affects the Job satisfaction , and Industrial Relationships affects the Job satisfaction. After finishing all data analysis, the conclusion is that lots of Job related activities raise the confidence of Job satisfaction of employees with their salary and other benefits.

Keywords: HRM, HR practices, job satisfaction, TQM.

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Authors: Anant Oonsivilai, Kenedy A. Greyson

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The growth and interconnection of power networks in many regions has invited complicated techniques for energy management services (EMS). State estimation techniques become a powerful tool in power system control centers, and that more information is required to achieve the objective of EMS. For the online state estimator, assuming the continuous time is equidistantly sampled with period Δt, processing events must be finished within this period. Advantage of Kalman Filtering (KF) algorithm in using system information to improve the estimation precision is utilized. Computational power is a major issue responsible for the achievement of the objective, i.e. estimators- solution at a small sampled period. This paper presents the optimum utilization of processors in a state estimator based on KF. The model used is presented using Petri net (PN) theory.

Keywords: Kalman filters, model, Petri Net, power system, sequential State estimator.

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Authors: Yasir M. Alyazichi, Brian G. Jones, Errol McLean, Hamd N. Altalyan, Ali K. M. Al-Nasrawi

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The main purpose of this study is to assess the sediment quality and potential ecological risk in marine sediments in Gymea Bay located in south Sydney, Australia. A total of 32 surface sediment samples were collected from the bay. Current track trajectories and velocities have also been measured in the bay. The resultant trace elements were compared with the adverse biological effect values Effect Range Low (ERL) and Effect Range Median (ERM) classifications. The results indicate that the average values of chromium, arsenic, copper, zinc, and lead in surface sediments all reveal low pollution levels and are below ERL and ERM values. The highest concentrations of trace elements were found close to discharge points and in the inner bay, and were linked with high percentages of clay minerals, pyrite and organic matter, which can play a significant role in trapping and accumulating these elements. The lowest concentrations of trace elements were found to be on the shoreline of the bay, which contained high percentages of sand fractions. It is postulated that the fine particles and trace elements are disturbed by currents and tides, then transported and deposited in deeper areas. The current track velocities recorded in Gymea Bay had the capability to transport fine particles and trace element pollution within the bay. As a result, hydrodynamic measurements were able to provide useful information and to help explain the distribution of sedimentary particles and geochemical properties. This may lead to knowledge transfer to other bay systems, including those in remote areas. These activities can be conducted at a low cost, and are therefore also transferrable to developing countries. The advent of portable instruments to measure trace elements in the field has also contributed to the development of these lower cost and easily applied methodologies available for use in remote locations and low-cost economies.

Keywords: Current track velocities, Gymea Bay, surface sediments, trace elements.

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Authors: Hung T. Tsou, Hsuan Y. Hsu

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Service innovations are central concerns in fast changing environment. Due to the fitness in customer demands and advances in information technologies (IT) in service management, an expanded conceptualization of e-service innovation is required. Specially, innovation practices have become increasingly more challenging, driving managers to employ a different open innovation model to maintain competitive advantages. At the same time, firms need to interact with external and internal customers in innovative environments, like the open innovation networks, to co-create values. Based on these issues, an important conceptual framework of e-service innovation is developed. This paper aims to examine the contributing factors on e-service innovation and firm performance, including financial and non-financial aspects. The study concludes by showing how e-service innovation will play a significant role in growing the overall values of the firm. The discussion and conclusion will lead to a stronger understanding of e-service innovation and co-creating values with customers within open innovation networks.

Keywords: e-Service innovation, performance, open innovation networks, co-create value.

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Authors: Monis Akhlaq, M Noman Jafri, Muzammil A Khan, Baber Aslam

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The Ad Hoc on demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol is designed for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). AODV offers quick adaptation to dynamic link conditions; it is characterized by low memory overhead and low network utilization. The security issues related to the protocol remain challenging for the wireless network designers. Numerous schemes have been proposed for establishing secure communication between end users, these schemes identify that the secure operation of AODV is a bi tier task (routing and secure exchange of information at separate levels). Our endeavor in this paper would focus on achieving the routing and secure data exchange in a single step. This will facilitate the user nodes to perform routing, mutual authentications, generation and secure exchange of session key in one step thus ensuring confidentiality, integrity and authentication of data exchange in a more suitable way.

Keywords: AODV, key management, security, wirelessnetworks.

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Authors: Érica Lima

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In the digital era, in which we have an avalanche of information, it is not new that the Internet has brought new modes of communication and knowledge access. Characterized by the multiplicity of discourses, opinions, beliefs and cultures, the web is a space of political-ideological dimensions where people (who often do not know each other) interact and create representations, deconstruct stereotypes, and redefine identities. Currently, the translator needs to be able to deal with digital spaces ranging from specific software to social media, which inevitably impact on his professional life. One of the most impactful ways of being seen in cyberspace is the participation in social networking groups. In addition to its ability to disseminate information among participants, social networking groups allow a significant personal and social exposure. Such exposure is due to the visibility of each participant achieved not only on its personal profile page, but also in each comment or post the person makes in the groups. The objective of this paper is to study the representations of translators and translation process on the Internet, more specifically in publications in two Brazilian groups of great influence on the Facebook: "Translators/Interpreters" and "Translators, Interpreters and Curious". These chosen groups represent the changes the network has brought to the profession, including the way translators are seen and see themselves. The analyzed posts allowed a reading of what common sense seems to think about the translator as opposed to what the translators seem to think about themselves as a professional class. The results of the analysis lead to the conclusion that these two positions are antagonistic and sometimes represent conflict of interests: on the one hand, the society in general consider the translator’s work something easy, therefore it is not necessary to be well remunerated; on the other hand, the translators who know how complex a translation process is and how much it takes to be a good professional. The results also reveal that social networking sites such as Facebook provide more visibility, but it takes a more active role from the translator to achieve a greater appreciation of the profession and more recognition of the role of the translator, especially in face of increasingly development of automatic translation programs.

Keywords: Facebook, social representation, translation, translator.

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Authors: Oghenerukome Akponovo, Lynda I. Onyebuchukwu

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Construction waste, along with that of many other industries, contributes significantly to the world's annual solid waste totals. Most of these materials, such as ash from rice hulls, slags, cement kiln dust, tire ash, plastic waste (PW), and silica fumes, end up in landfills or waterways. Some of them might even end up polluting the air from high in the atmosphere. It is sustainable, cheap, and environmentally friendly to recycle these items into new building supplies. When constructing a "green" structure, the materials employed have the potential to either exacerbate environmental imbalance or maintain a stable ecosystem. The purpose of this research is to take stock of what is already known about recycling's potential in the construction industry and to identify its deficiencies. Therefore, this study systematically reviews the wide range of recycled materials that go into building construction. In the construction industry, the utilization of recycled materials plays a significant role in environmental conservation, and a thorough investigation into these materials could potentially yield substantial economic benefits if appropriately harnessed.

Keywords: Paper waste, rice grain husks, recycled materials, waste management.

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Authors: Kainat Affrin, P. Reshma, G. Narendra Kumar

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Optimization of timetable is the need of the day for the rescheduling and routing of trains in real time. Trains are scheduled in parallel with the road transport vehicles to the same destination. As the number of trains is restricted due to single track, customers usually opt for road transport to use frequently. The air pollution increases as the density of vehicles on road transport is increased. Use of an alternate mode of transport like train helps in reducing air-pollution. This paper mainly aims at attracting the passengers to Train transport by proper rescheduling of trains using hybrid of stop-skip algorithm and iterative convex programming algorithm. Rescheduling of train bi-directionally is achieved on a single track with dynamic dual time and varying stops. Introduction of more trains attract customers to use rail transport frequently, thereby decreasing the pollution. The results are simulated using Network Simulator (NS-2).

Keywords: Air pollution, routing protocol, network simulator, rescheduling.

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Authors: Ying-Hsiu Chen, Pao-Peng Hsu, Mou-Yuan Liao, Shu-Min Hsieh

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This paper employs a the variable returns to scale DEA model to take account of risky assets and estimate the operating efficiencies for the 21 domestic listed securities firms during the period 2005-2009. Evidence is found that on average the brokerage securities firms- operating efficiencies are better than integrated securities firms. Evidence is also found that the technical inefficiency from inappropriate management constitutes the main source of the operating inefficiency for both types of securities firms. Moreover, the scale economies prevail in brokerage and integrated securities firms, in other words, which exhibit the characteristic of increasing returns to scale.

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis, Risky Assets, PureTechnical Efficiency, Scale Efficiency, Scale Economies.

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Authors: Samson Abayomi Olasoju, Olufemi Adekunle, Titilope Edun, Johnson Owoseni

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Science offers opportunities for revolutionizing human activities, enriched by input from scientific research and technology. Biotechnology is a major force for development in developing countries such as Nigeria. It is found to contribute to solving human problems like water and food insecurity that impede national development and threaten peace wherever it is applied. This review identified the problems of agricultural biotechnology in Nigeria. On the part of rural farmers, there is a lack of adequate knowledge or awareness of biotechnology despite the fact that they constitute the bulk of Nigerian farmers. On part of the government, the problems include: lack of adequate implementation of government policy on bio-safety and genetically modified products, inadequate funding of education as well as research and development of products related to biotechnology. Other problems include: inadequate infrastructures (including laboratory), poor funding and lack of national strategies needed for development and running of agricultural biotechnology. In spite of all the challenges associated with agricultural biotechnology, its prospects still remain great if Nigeria is to meet with the food needs of the country’s ever increasing population. The introduction of genetically engineered products will lead to the high productivity needed for commercialization and food security. Insect, virus and other related diseases resistant crops and livestock are another viable area of contribution of biotechnology to agricultural production. In conclusion, agricultural biotechnology will not only ensure food security, but, in addition, will ensure that the local farmers utilize appropriate technology needed for large production, leading to the prosperity of the farmers and national economic growth, provided government plays its role of adequate funding and good policy implementation.

Keywords: Biosafety, biotechnology, food security, genetic engineering, genetic modification.

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Authors: Govindaraj Ramanathan

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The time delay and the structural stability are major issues in big size projects due to several factors. Improper planning and poor coordination lead to delay in construction, which sometimes result in reworking or rebuilding. This definitely increases the cost and time of project. This situation stresses the structural engineers to plan out of the limits of contemporary technology utilizing non-chronological approach with creative ideas. One of the strategies to solve this issue is through structural integrity solutions in a cost-effective way. We have faced several problems in a project worth 470 million USD, and one such issue is crane girder installation with composite steel beams. We have applied structural integrity approach with the proper and revised planning schedule to solve the problem efficiently with minimal expenses.

Keywords: Construction management, delay, non-chronological approach, composite beam, structural integrity.

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Authors: Boonlert Watjatrakul

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Educational institutions increasingly adopt the students-as-customers concept to satisfy their students. Understanding students- perspectives on the use of this business concept in educational institutions is necessary for the institutions to effectively align these perspectives with their management practice. The study investigates whether students in technology and business disciplines have significantly different attitudes toward using the students-as-customers concept in educational institutions and explores the impact of treating students as customers in technology disciplines under students- perspectives. The results from quantitative and qualitative data analyses show that technology students, in contrast to business students, fairly disagree with educational institutions to treat students as customers. Treating students as customers in technology disciplines will have a negative influence on teaching performance, instructor-student relationships and educational institutions- aim, but a positive influence on service quality in educational institutions. The paper discusses the findings and concludes with implications and limitations of the study.

Keywords: Education, information technology, students-ascustomers, technology disciplines.

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Authors: Cheng-Hsiung Hung, Hong-Jie Dai, Jason Jen-Yen Chen

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This paper presents a new approach for intelligent agent communication based on ontology for agent community. DARPA agent markup language (DAML) is used to build the community ontology. This paper extends the agent management specification by the foundation for intelligent physical agents (FIPA) to develop an agent role called community facilitator (CF) that manages community directory and community ontology. CF helps build agent community. Precise description of agent service in this community can thus be achieved. This facilitates agent communication. Furthermore, through ontology update, agents with different ontology are capable of communicating with each other. An example of advanced traveler information system is included to illustrate practicality of this approach.

Keywords: Intelligent agent communication, DARPA agent markup language (DAML), Community ontology, Advanced Traveler Information System (ATIS).

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Authors: K. Vidya, V.Rhymend Uthariaraj

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Traffic Engineering (TE) is the process of controlling how traffic flows through a network in order to facilitate efficient and reliable network operations while simultaneously optimizing network resource utilization and traffic performance. TE improves the management of data traffic within a network and provides the better utilization of network resources. Many research works considers intra and inter Traffic Engineering separately. But in reality one influences the other. Hence the effective network performances of both inter and intra Autonomous Systems (AS) are not optimized properly. To achieve a better Joint Optimization of both Intra and Inter AS TE, we propose a joint Optimization technique by considering intra-AS features during inter – AS TE and vice versa. This work considers the important criterion say latency within an AS and between ASes. and proposes a Bi-Criteria Latency optimization model. Hence an overall network performance can be improved by considering this jointoptimization technique in terms of Latency.

Keywords: Inter-Domain Routing , Measurement, OptimizationPerformance, Traffic Engineering.

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Authors: Ladhari A., Omezzine F., Rinez A., Haouala R.

Abstract:

Phytotoxicity of Daphne gnidium L. was evaluated through the effect of incorporating leaves, stems and roots biomass into soil (at 12.5, 25, 50g/Kg) and irrigation by their aqueous extracts (50g/L), on the growth of two crops (Lactuca sativa L. and Raphanus sativus L.) and two weeds (Peaganum harmala L. and Scolymus maculatus L.). Results revealed a perceptible phytotoxic effect which increased with dose and concentration. At the highest dose, roots and leaves residues was the most toxic and caused total inhibition respectively, for lettuce and thistle seedling growth. Irrigation with aqueous extracts of D. gnidium different organs decreased also seedlings length of all test species. Stems extract was more inhibitor on thistle than peganum seedling growth; it induced a significant reduction of 80% and 67%, for, respectively, roots and shoots. Results of the present study suggest that different organs of D. gnidium could be exploited in the management of agro-ecosystems.

Keywords: Biomass, Daphne gnidium L., phytoxicity, seedlinggrowth

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Authors: Cheng Fang Hsu, Shinn-Jong Lin

Abstract:

This paper aims at a new challenge of customer satisfaction on mobile customer relationship management. In this paper presents a conceptualization of mCRM on its unique characteristics of customer satisfaction. Also, this paper develops an empirical framework in conception of customer satisfaction in mCRM. A single-case study is applied as the methodology. In order to gain an overall view of the empirical case, this paper accesses to invisible and important information of company in this investigation. Interview is the key data source form the main informants of the company through which the issues are identified and the proposed framework is built. It supports the development of customer satisfaction in mCRM; links this theoretical framework into practice; and provides the direction for future research. Therefore, this paper is very useful for the industries as it helps them to understand how customer satisfaction changes the mCRM structure and increase the business competitive advantage. Finally, this paper provides a contribution in practice by linking a theoretical framework in conception of customer satisfaction in mCRM for companies to a practical real case.

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; mCRM; MobileCommunication.

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Authors: Nameesh Miglani, Rajeev Saha, R. S. Parihar

Abstract:

Estimation of the quality regarding higher education within a university is practically long drawn process besides being difficult to measure primarily due to lack of a standard scale. National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) evolved a methodology of assessment which involves self-appraisal by each university/college and an assessment of performance by an expert committee. The attributes involved in assessing a university may not be totally independent from each other thereby necessitating the consideration of interdependencies. The present study focuses on evaluation of assessment criteria using graph theoretic approach and fuzzy treatment of data collected from the students. The technique will provide a suitable platform to university management team to cross check assessment of education quality by considering interdependencies of the attributes using graph theory.

Keywords: Graph theory, NAAC accreditation criteria, Indian University accreditation process.

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